Summary

A bold proposal, based on similarities in stone tools, revives the discredited notion that ancient Europeans crossed the Atlantic to settle the New World. At a meeting called "Clovis and Beyond," held last month in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an archaeologist presented evidence of technological parallels between the Clovis people, long thought to have been the first to settle in North America some 11,500 years ago, and the Solutreans, who lived in northern Spain some 20,000 years ago. Some archaeologists dismiss the notion, but others are intrigued.